I last posted about not being able to tell my mom all the things I would usually tell her. It had become this overwhelming ball of pressure like an overfilled balloon.
The other day, I had a number of things to do.
I needed a caffeine boost first, so I started by making coffee. The first thing that comes to mind when I drink coffee is my Mom. She’d make her morning coffee, then her afternoon cup, and sometimes even one after dinner.
Growing up, we probably started drinking coffee earlier than our peers. I recall that my daily coffee habit had established itself during 8th grade.
And so it began, that sitting around the table with a cup of coffee became a thing for us, my sisters, my mom, and me.
We are gabbers, all of us girls. We all do it.
It made sense that when we had time and opportunity, we’d call each other. As adults, our longest conversations happened while getting things done.
Our ritual
Once I was married, and we had moved i to our own house, and I would find myself calling Mom while doing mundane things.
We’d chat while cleaning or cooking, and on those particular days, we just never ran out of something to say. I remember so many times when we’d finish a long call and one of us would suddenly remember one last thing we had wanted to tell the other, only to stay on the phone another 45 minutes.
So there I was, making coffee, and started to talk out loud to my mom. It just happened without thinking.
I told her about how I had mixed my usual cheap coffee with a pound of Dunkin’ Donuts bright blend. I told her how it made a pretty good cup, and that I thought she would’ve liked it. And then it led me down the road of a topic that we had discussed many many times, which was, “should I get a stovetop percolator?”. Percolators make a fine cuppa. (I still have not made that decision).
As I started doing my work, I just kept talking as if I had the phone on speaker.
The words just started to pour out. I got lost in the conversation.
I finally got to tell her about the little seafood restaurant, and how the menu featured so many dishes that she would’ve loved.
Often times we would talk about food that I was cooking or some thing that we had had, and she would joke “have some for me” because she was maybe watching her cholesterol or she got heartburn from whatever it was. So it became a big joke where we would always have to “have some for her”.
I promised her that the next time we went there, we would order food that she loved, and we would dedicate it to her.
I also talked about the cats, who never failed to provide a good encdote. I talked about our plan for getting rid of furniture and rearranging the house. I rattled on about 7 or 8 different topics that were in my head at the moment.
All the while, I was corralling the cats, washing the floor, unloading the dishwasher and reloading it, putting things away – all things that I would usually do during one of our marathon phone calls. And per usual, for a good hour and a half, I just kept babbling.
for me to let them out into the yard
Some healing
This conversation with my Mom had a few more tears than they did in the past, but I also found myself laughing a few times. Laughing and smiling at some memories that randomly popped up.
I heard her, in my soul. Although at some points, I forgot that she wasn’t really on the other end of the phone, when I did, I knew what she would have said in response. I truly felt that we were having a two-way conversation.
Somehow, the building pressure of all the things I had thought about telling her had released. It was like an overfilled balloon running out of air. I dare say, I felt a little bit of healing in that moment.
I am struggling to get used to the huge absence. I never realized how much space she inhabited in my life. However, I am starting to catch myself before finishing the sentence “I have to tell my Mom”.
I finished my work after about two hours, which is a challenge for me to accomplish at once. I said good-bye to my Mom as I poured a second cup of coffee, and sat down to rest, promising her, “I’ll have some for you!”
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